Weekend reading: flavors of the month, yea or nay?
If you're like us, you can always use some good reading for a lazy weekend, and we here at Massively are always happy to oblige. We stumbled upon an interesting point of contention on the City of Heroes forums this weekend, one that has given us serious pause. The question at hand? Are so-called "flavors of the month," classes or specs that are made popular by patches, gear, or just by chance, bad for MMOs, or are they just a harmless side effect of a ever more alt-happy subscriber base?
For my part, I think the flavor of the month classes serve a necessary, if completely unintentional, part in the development and balance process. From what I've experienced, the most prominent reasons underlying most flavors of the month, as in the case of the dual blade scrappers in Issue 11, is that players want to try out new content for themselves. There's no better advertisement for a build than seeing it in the patch notes, and there's no better way to test the new builds for balance than by having thousands of players jump on it on patch day. For all the headaches the FotM crowds cause, I think their contributions are worth more to the greater community.
So what do you think, flavors of the month, yea or nay?
